Chrome to protect against resource-heavy ads

Google has announced it has taken steps to address ads that are slowing down your computer when you’re using its web browser, Google Chrome.

“We have recently discovered that a fraction of a percent of ads consume a disproportionate share of device resources, such as battery and network data, without the user knowing about it,” said the company in a recent blog post.

“These ads (such as those that mine cryptocurrency, are poorly programmed, or are unoptimized for network usage) can drain battery life, saturate already strained networks, and cost money.”

To deal with this, Chrome has said it will limit the resources a display ad can use before a user directly interacts with it. When an ad reaches its limit, the ad’s frame will navigate to an error page, informing the user that the ad has used too many resources.

The team said they are going to continue experimenting with this new method over the next few months and will launch it on Chrome stable near the end of August. This is to give time for ad creators and tool providers to adapt their ads with these thresholds in mind.